B.S.E. (Computer Science and Engineering), University of Pennsylvania, 1988

Courses Taught:

EGEE 451: Energy Systems Analysis

EBF 483: Electricity Markets

EME 500: Methods for Energy Systems Analysis

About:

Prof. Webster's research and teaching centers on the design, planning, and management of coupled energy and environmental systems with a particular focus on electric power systems. His research focus is on the development and application of methods for sequential decision under uncertainty, with a particular emphasis on applications to electric power systems planning and operations, energy systems design for flexibility and resilience, and environmental regulatory design. Long-term planning for infrastructure, such as the electric power system, is a complex sequence of decisions that must be made under uncertainty, with important interdependencies on other physical and economic systems. The characteristics of this problem class have required new algorithms and methodological innovations at the interface of engineering, economics, and operations research to enable tractable and computationally feasible solutions. The complexity of these coupled systems have required interdisciplinary collaborative approaches that integrate models and methods from traditionally distinct fields to understand the critical feedbacks. The application of these approaches to energy and environmental decision problems have also led to contributions to the climate change, regional air quality, power system planning and operations, and the energy-water nexus domains.

Research Projects:

Electric Power Transmission Planning Under Uncertainty

This project is developing new algorithms for multi-stage transmission planning under uncertainty that can scale efficiently for large (RTO-scale) networks, large numbers of candidate lines, large numbers of scenarios, and two or more decision stages with recourse.

Funding: National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy

Graduate Student: Jesse Bukenberger

Collaborator: Uday Shanbhag

Coupled Multi-Sector Dynamics and Resilience

This project includes several efforts to develop a hierarchy of power system models of varying scale and complexity, and couple these models with models of other coupled systems, including water balance models, economic models, and agricultural models, to explore resilience of the coupled systems. These efforts are part of The Program for Coupled Human and Earth Systems (PCHES) is a project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, looking to create a state-of-the-art framework of computational tools that will help to assess the impacts of weather-related variability and change.

Funding: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science

Graduate Students: Vijay Kumar, Brayam Valqui

Collaborators: Karen Fisher-Vanden

Value of Flexibility in Power Systems

The project is exploring the economic value of adding specific flexibility features to electric power generation in terms of 1) total cost to the system (i.e., to the consumer), and 2) the change in net revenues (profits) to the owner of the generation unit. In collaboration with engineers at General Electric's Power Services Division and Energy Consulting, we test the relative impacts of modifying natural gas combustion turbines to shorten startup times, increase ramp rates, lower the minimum output level, and increase the maximum output level. We use unit commitment models of actual systems with both deterministic and stochastic version.